giant cell arteritis
Sign in to saveAlso known as Giant cell arteritis (disorder), Giant cell arteritis NOS (disorder), Horton's disease, Temporal arteritis (disorder), Temporal arteritis, Cranial Arteritis, Polymyalgia Rheumatica, Horton disease
human disease
Key facts
- Other names
- Temporal arteritis, cranial arteritis, Horton disease, senile arteritis, granulomatous arteritis
- Specialty
- Rheumatology , emergency medicine , Immunology
- Symptoms
- Headache , pain over the temples, flu-like symptoms , double vision , difficulty opening the mouth
- Complications
- Blindness , aortic dissection , aortic aneurysm , polymyalgia rheumatica
- Usual onset
- Age greater than 50
- Causes
- Inflammation of the small blood vessels within the walls of larger arteries
- Diagnostic method
- Based on symptoms and blood tests, confirmed by biopsy of the temporal artery
- Differential diagnosis
- Takayasu arteritis , stroke , primary amyloidosis
- Treatment
- Steroids , bisphosphonates , proton-pump inhibitor
- Prognosis
- Life expectancy (typically normal)
- Frequency
- ~ 1 in 15,000 people a year (> 50 years old)
via Wikipedia infobox
Research
10,314 papers- Giant cell arteritis.Postgraduate medicine · 2023
- Giant cell arteritis: Its ophthalmic manifestations.Indian journal of ophthalmology · 2021
- Giant cell arteritis.Seminars in ophthalmology · 2008
- Giant-Cell Arteritis.The New England journal of medicine · 2022
- Giant cell arteritis.Disease-a-month : DM · 2017
via PubMed
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- symptom or sign
- Subclass of
- disease
- Named after
- Bayard Taylor Horton
- Image
- Gray508.png
Show 10 more facts
- symptoms and signs
- headache
- health specialty
- rheumatology
- NCI Thesaurus ID
- C35065
- ICPC 2 ID
- K99
- exact match
- www.orpha.net/ORDO/Orphanet_397
- ICD-9-CM
- 446.5
- drug or therapy used for treatment
- sumatriptan
- external data available at URL
- www.nanbyou.or.jp/entry/3928
- Commons category
- Giant-cell arteritis
- on focus list of Wikimedia project
- WikiProject Medicine
Sources (10)
via Wikidata · CC0
~11 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Giant cell arteritis (GCA), also called temporal arteritis, is an inflammatory autoimmune disease of large blood vessels. It is the most common type of systemic vasculitis affecting adults. Symptoms may include headache, pain over the temples, flu-like symptoms, double vision, and difficulty opening the mouth. Complications can include blockage of the artery to the eye with resulting blindness, as well as aortic dissection, and aortic aneurysm. GCA is frequently associated with polymyalgia rheumatica.
The cause is unknown. The underlying mechanism involves inflammation of the small blood vessels that supply the walls of larger arteries. This mainly affects arteries around the head and neck, though some in the chest may also be affected. Diagnosis is suspected based on symptoms, blood tests, and medical imaging, and confirmed by biopsy of the temporal artery. However, in about 10% of people the temporal artery is normal.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “giant cell arteritis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.